#69 - Less paperwork, more family with Katrina Lanahan and Sonya Silva
What happens when a system designed for external foster-family’s is applied to kin-specific family’s? We talked with Katrina Lanahan and Sonya Silva about the foster system in the USA and learned a lot about the essence of timing, the power of simplicity, how financial incentives move systems, and the most important thing find the allies who have been waiting for exactly this moment! Dive deep with us in how service design can help move things around with a lot of different stakeholders.
In the US, around 40% of children entering foster care are placed with kin, relatives or adults they already know. Yet the licensing process they must navigate was built for families who voluntarily sign up to foster a stranger's child. The result: unnecessary paperwork, months-long delays, and families willing to help who can't get licensed fast enough to receive the financial support they need.
Katrina Lanahan and Sonya Silva from Bloomworks tackled exactly this challenge, and won the Service Design Award 2025 for Best Professional Non-Profit Project. In this episode, they take us through six interconnected projects that resulted in a set of national kin-specific foster home approval standards, now adopted by 20 US states and 6 tribes.
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